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Wired article....
Army Tests Fighting 'Bot
"The U.S. Army will soon test a six-wheeled, 20-foot robot to see whether it can traverse rugged terrain, fire machine guns and carry 1,900 pounds of gear without soldiers remotely controlling its every move," Defense News reports.
The two-and-a-half ton Multifunction Utility Logistics and Equipment (MULE) vehicle is seen as the 'bot that will travel with every light infantry company in the Army of ten-to-fifteen years' hence. (Of course, with robots being cut left and right from the Army's future plans, you never can tell.)
"Designed to fly on a Black Hawk, the [MULE] will carry two 7.62mm machine guns and two Javelin anti-tank missiles and feed camera data from its on-board sensors." Backers like Major David Byers, the MULE's assistant program manager, see the machine as "the equivalent of [a] weapon squad. You double the firepower without putting soldiers in harm’s way."
Carnegie Mellon University researchers are working on an even meaner, six-ton version. But making the machine brawny is the easy part, really. The tough thing is making the robot smart enough -- and reliable enough -- to operate on its own, more or less. Today's military robots on the ground are no more independent that a kid's radio-controlled toy. That's what made the military's robot rally across the Mojave such a big deal: The robots actually drove, and navigated, on their own. The MULE is supposed to pull of the same trick, using "an Autonomous Navigation System (ANS) whose algorithms can direct its own course."
"The U.S. Army will soon test a six-wheeled, 20-foot robot to see whether it can traverse rugged terrain, fire machine guns and carry 1,900 pounds of gear without soldiers remotely controlling its every move," Defense News reports.
The two-and-a-half ton Multifunction Utility Logistics and Equipment (MULE) vehicle is seen as the 'bot that will travel with every light infantry company in the Army of ten-to-fifteen years' hence. (Of course, with robots being cut left and right from the Army's future plans, you never can tell.)
"Designed to fly on a Black Hawk, the [MULE] will carry two 7.62mm machine guns and two Javelin anti-tank missiles and feed camera data from its on-board sensors." Backers like Major David Byers, the MULE's assistant program manager, see the machine as "the equivalent of [a] weapon squad. You double the firepower without putting soldiers in harm’s way."
Carnegie Mellon University researchers are working on an even meaner, six-ton version. But making the machine brawny is the easy part, really. The tough thing is making the robot smart enough -- and reliable enough -- to operate on its own, more or less. Today's military robots on the ground are no more independent that a kid's radio-controlled toy. That's what made the military's robot rally across the Mojave such a big deal: The robots actually drove, and navigated, on their own. The MULE is supposed to pull of the same trick, using "an Autonomous Navigation System (ANS) whose algorithms can direct its own course."
“Right now, we have mastered waypoint-to-waypoint — where you give the robot a series of GPS points and it moves from GPS point to GPS point to GPS point,†Byers said. “Our next step is to integrate the ANS onto the vehicle and we are preparing to test the robot’s ability to perceive an obstacle and find its own way. The sensors can already tell the difference between objects. We have to prove on a military vehicle that we can do it.â€
The toughest part is programming a robot to maneuver around another moving object... Massachusetts Institute of Technology research scientist Karl Iagnemma said... “This capability has been demonstrated in laboratory conditions, though not in Army-relevant conditions.â€
The toughest part is programming a robot to maneuver around another moving object... Massachusetts Institute of Technology research scientist Karl Iagnemma said... “This capability has been demonstrated in laboratory conditions, though not in Army-relevant conditions.â€